About The Project

While the Strategic Islands project is coming to an end, I am just beginning the three year SSHRC funded “Sturgeon Falls Mill Closing Project”. The proposed project examines how displaced industrial workers, their families, and the town of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario adjusted to the closure of Weyerhaeuser’s corrugated paper mill in December 2002. The mill was the centre of local life for more than a century. I am particularly interested in how local identities intersect with trans-local ones in the aftermath of a mill closing. Life course interviews will be conducted with 150 residents of Sturgeon Falls, producing the most comprehensive oral record of a single mill closing in Canada. Non-resident politicians, forestry executives and union officials will also be interviewed. As 65-70 interviews have been completed thus far, I intend to conduct a second round of interviews with this segment. While this longitudinal approach is rare in oral history, it will allow me to study changes in how the mill and its closing is remembered.

The two major aims of the project are the publication of a monograph and the creation of an oral history video database that is searchable—the first of its kind in Canada. In doing so, the project will explore the politics and meaning of deindustrialization in a single-industry town located in Canada’s resource hinterland. Until now, the study of Canada’s towns of single-industry has not been informed by the burgeoning deindustrialization literature in the United States. One of the basic characteristics of this new American literature is its cultural approach to the study of sudden catastrophic economic change (Cowie and Heathcott; Dudley; Linkon and Russo). It will likewise add something new to the international scholarship on deindustrialization. Buliding on my last book, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt (2003), I want to examine deindustrialization through a full investigation of a single mill closing. While this is nothing new in itself, the study will explore the complexity of people’s place attachments and community as town, city or neighbourhood that still prevails in the U.S. scholarship (Joseph; Lasch).

The Sturgeon Falls Mill Closing Project will first examine the place of the mill in the lives, labour and politics of Sturgeon Falls residents since 1947 (the year that the mill re-opened after a 15 year shutdown). Was it a “company town” in the traditional sense? Did shop-floor relations spill over into the local community? What was the interplay of class, religion and language? Was Sturgeon Falls a “working man’s town”? Did mill managers seek to dominate local politics? How did these managers respond to the gradual decline of the mill? Were mill managers encouraged to be innovators? The oral history interviews conducted thus far have strongly suggested that the mill once divided the town along class and linguistic lines. The mill was run by English-speaking managers recruited from outside the region. Its hourly work force, however, was drawn mainly from local French-speaking Roman Catholics who represented the overwhelming majority of the area’s population. English was nonetheless the language of work in the mill; there were few French-speaking managers until the final years of operation.

The project will then examine the wide-ranging effects of the December 2002 closure. The oral history interviews conducted thus far indicate that Weyerhaeuser’s decision to close the mill produced a fiercely patriotic reaction among mill workers. Workers emphasize the fact that it was an American-owned business and repeatedly suggest that that a Canadian owned company would have kept the mill in operation. The project will examine this identification with nation at the moment of crisis, but will also consider the changing views of former mill workers and other residents toward their locality. Did the mill closing undermine community identity and place attachment? Has there been conflict over place identity? How has the mill’s demolition been received?

What is missing from the literature on job loss in Canada is a firm understanding of the cultural meaning of job loss (Barnes and Hayter; Bradbury and St. Martin; Mawhiney and Pitblado). Displaced long-service workers lost far more than a pay cheque the day their mill of factory closed. They lost part of themselves. This project builds on two of my longstanding research interests: the concept of community and the deindustrialization of the Great Lakes region.

When a mill or factory closes, job loss is a collective experience. This is especially true in a single-industry town. The experience of the workers of Sturgeon Falls in the months following the mill’s closing was influenced, no doubt, by their collective sense of community—be it a local community of a national one. The interplay of community narratives and individual stories will be explored using the Interclipper database.


		Sturgeon Falls Mill Closing Project
		About The Project While the Strategic Islands project is coming to an end, I am just beginning the three year SSHRC funded “Sturgeon Falls Mill Closing Project”. The proposed project examines how displaced industrial workers, their families, and the town of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario adjusted to the closure of Weyerhaeuser’s corrugated paper mill in December 2002. The mill was the centre of local life for more than a century. I am particularly interested in how local identities intersect with trans-local ones in the aftermath of a mill closing. Life course interviews will be conducted with 150 residents of Sturgeon Falls, producing the most comprehensive oral record of a single mill closing in Canada. Non-resident politicians, forestry executives and union officials will also be interviewed. As 65-70 interviews have been completed thus far, I intend to conduct a second round of interviews with this segment. While this longitudinal approach is rare in oral history, it will allow me to study changes in how the mill and its closing is remembered. The two major aims of the project are the publication of a monograph and the creation of an oral history video database that is searchable—the first of its kind in Canada. In doing so, the project will explore the politics and meaning of deindustrialization in a single-industry town located in Canada’s resource hinterland. Until now, the study of Canada’s towns of single-industry has not been informed by the burgeoning deindustrialization literature in the United States. One of the basic characteristics of this new American literature is its cultural approach to the study of sudden catastrophic economic change (Cowie and Heathcott; Dudley; Linkon and Russo). It will likewise add something new to the international scholarship on deindustrialization. Buliding on my last book, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt (2003), I want to examine deindustrialization through a full investigation of a single mill closing. While this is nothing new in itself, the study will explore the complexity of people’s place attachments and community as town, city or neighbourhood that still prevails in the U.S. scholarship (Joseph; Lasch). The Sturgeon Falls Mill Closing Project will first examine the place of the mill in the lives, labour and politics of Sturgeon Falls residents since 1947 (the year that the mill re-opened after a 15 year shutdown). Was it a “company town” in the traditional sense? Did shop-floor relations spill over into the local community? What was the interplay of class, religion and language? Was Sturgeon Falls a “working man’s town”? Did mill managers seek to dominate local politics? How did these managers respond to the gradual decline of the mill? Were mill managers encouraged to be innovators? The oral history interviews conducted thus far have strongly suggested that the mill once divided the town along class and linguistic lines. The mill was run by English-speaking managers recruited from outside the region. Its hourly work force, however, was drawn mainly from local French-speaking Roman Catholics who represented the overwhelming majority of the area’s population. English was nonetheless the language of work in the mill; there were few French-speaking managers until the final years of operation. The project will then examine the wide-ranging effects of the December 2002 closure. The oral history interviews conducted thus far indicate that Weyerhaeuser’s decision to close the mill produced a fiercely patriotic reaction among mill workers. Workers emphasize the fact that it was an American-owned business and repeatedly suggest that that a Canadian owned company would have kept the mill in operation. The project will examine this identification with nation at the moment of crisis, but will also consider the changing views of former mill workers and other residents toward their locality. Did the mill closing undermine community identity and place attachment? Has there been conflict over place identity? How has the mill’s demolition been received? What is missing from the literature on job loss in Canada is a firm understanding of the cultural meaning of job loss (Barnes and Hayter; Bradbury and St. Martin; Mawhiney and Pitblado). Displaced long-service workers lost far more than a pay cheque the day their mill of factory closed. They lost part of themselves. This project builds on two of my longstanding research interests: the concept of community and the deindustrialization of the Great Lakes region. When a mill or factory closes, job loss is a collective experience. This is especially true in a single-industry town. The experience of the workers of Sturgeon Falls in the months following the mill’s closing was influenced, no doubt, by their collective sense of community—be it a local community of a national one. The interplay of community narratives and individual stories will be explored using the Interclipper database.